Portable devices, such as, for example, cellular phones, laptops, PDAs and the like are utilized on a regular and daily basis by mobile workers to transmit communications between coworkers, clients, employers and the like, to maintain business schedules, to manage activities and to access and view business associated files. As a result, these portable devices have allowed the mobile workers to work from remote locations with respect to places of employment. Allowing mobile workers to work from remote locations has caused an increase in demand for portable devices having displays to allow the mobile workers to access and to view documents, electronic files and the like.
Portable devices with displays are useful for increasing the mobility of the mobile workers by allowing the mobile workers to view important information or data that may be included within documents and electronic files. The mobile workers may retrieve the documents or the electronic files from storage devices of the portable devices and may view the documents or the electronic files via the one or more displays for the portable devices. However, current displays often have poor readability or visibility for the documents or the electronic files. The poor readability of displays for the portable devices is due to poor resolution in display screens and poor brightness with respect to surrounding environments. Typically, display screens for portable devices have a resolution of about 100 dpi.
Printable media, such as, for example, sheets of paper, exhibit a higher readability than the readability of display screens associated with portable devices. Traditionally, images printed onto printable media have a resolution of at least double the resolution of display screens, for example of about 600 dpi or more, which is superior to the resolution associated with display screens. Thus, mobile workers are able to view documents and the like printed onto printable media with greater clarity than documents that are viewed only on display screens of portable devices.
However, physically printing documents with a portable device is presently problematic. The portable devices must connect to a printer that is stationary with respect to a physical location, such as a computer lab, an internet café, a printing shop and the like. Thus, to print images of documents or the digital files that may be accessed and displayed by the portable device, the mobile worker must either relocate to the physical location and connect the portable device to the printer, or must print to a remote location and then retrieve the prints having the images thereon from the printer. These activities that must be completed by the mobile workers to print to the printable media greatly reduces the mobility and the productivity of the mobile workers.
Alternatively, a portable device may have an integrated toner printer associated therewith. Such printers require developer units, such as, for example, toner cartridges, for the printer and large quantities of printable media for receiving images associated with the documents or the digital files from the printer. Most printers require at least four developer units to print or to write colored images onto the printable media. Each developer unit for the printer increases the overall weight of the portable device and the integrated printer. Additionally, the requirement of large quantities of printable media for printing images further increases the overall weight required to move and utilize the portable device and the printer. As the overall weight of the printer and the large quantities of printable media increases, the usefulness of the printer decreases, and the mobile workers bypass such printers and simply accept the low resolution of the screen display. Moreover, as the overall weight increases, utilizing the portable device with the printer becomes inconvenient, burdensome and difficult.
A need, therefore, exists for a system and a method for printing reimageable transient documents from a tonerless printer integrated with a portable device that increases mobility and the efficiency in printing images for greater image resolution. Moreover, a need exists for a system and a method for printing a large number of pages for a document with a smaller number of reimageable transient documents via the tonerless printer.